We have all observed even very young children carrying out coping behaviors, those which appear directed toward stress/threat/arousal reduction. However, we know relatively little about the content of these coping behaviors in children or the coping skills acquisition process. The purpose of the proposed research is to study both content and process. To study content we propose in Study 1: to develop a questionnaire for children aged 6 through l0 years to determine what coping behaviors they report using; to study the interrelationships among these behaviors; and to assess questionnaire validity by determining the relationship of these behaviors to indices of functioning, distress, well-being and life events stress. Questionnaire and structured interview methods will be used to obtain data from parents and children. An a priori 9 category structure into which coping behaviors are expected to fall has been elaborated from Lazarus' distinction between direct action and emotion palliation coping. Behaviors which appear to have stress-reduction potential based on the literature and child interviews and clinical work have been placed into the 9 categories and developmental predictions are made about the relative importance of these categories across the 6-10 year age range. To assess structure both non-forcing and procrustes factoring procedures will be used. If the questionnaire has sufficient validity, a long-range goal would be to use it clinically to identify coping skills deficits so that their remediation could be part of a child's treatment plan, and to use it as part of a primary prevention program for elementary school children or for special populations such as abused children so that any deficits in coping skills relative to norms for same-age peers could be identified and studied, and coping skills facilitation programs could be developed.